ideas about science and the cosmos
Archive for May, 2010
Last flight of Atlantis
May 27th
With the STS-132 completed, Atlantis’ legacy comes to an end with its retirement. Here are some video highlights of STS-132 and the Atlantis Orbiter. Discovery will see its last launch on September 16th, and Endeavor’s final launch will be sometime in November.
Phoenix Mars Lander is no more
May 26th
Earlier this week, the Odyssey orbiter flew over the Phoenix landing site in attempts to get a response from the lander and it had gone silent. The Pheonix landed on mars two years ago yesterday, May 25, 2008. Its primary goals were to look for microbial life and examine water on the red planet. Though the lander is now dead, its mission was a success and met its initial goals as of August 2008. It managed to successfully return data about Mar’s surface chemistry, weather, climate, and some landscape details. On November 2nd 2008, it returned it’s last signal : 0101010001110010011010010 1110101011011010111000001101000, or ”Triumph”.
Another interesting bit about the Phoenix is that it bears the first “hello from planet earth” disc for Mars. Similiar to the one that was put on the Voyager II, (currently the furthest human made object from earth), it contains information about humans, voices, and other archives of human information. While we know of no life on Mars just yet, we should never assume its lifeless. In the Cosmos chapter “Blues For a Red Planet”, Carl Sagan wrote, “If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes.”
I hope to do a lengthy post about Mars soon and the cool stuff we’ve done with our colder and redder sister planet.
More Info : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phx20100524.html
Cassini returns true-color images of Saturn and it’s moons
May 21st
Cassini, the spacecraft tasked with focusing it’s attention on Saturn and it’s moons returned some awesome true-color images.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/checking_in_on_saturn.html
Science and Politics
May 17th
Here in America, we tend to grumble about our government, but generally we acknowledge that it sure seems to beat many other countries, and is significantly better than countries that aren’t first-world. While it’s generally understood that we don’t put much emphasis on education, notably science education, it’s pretty clear we have the resources improve education, we just don’t like to.
In a perfect example of this lack of care for education, you shouldn’t be surprised to hear that a bill that just reached the House to improve funding for science education and jobs was destroyed by the GOP by a provision which, in simpler terms, made it so anyone who didn’t vote no on it was supporting viewing of pornography by state employees.
It truly is depressing to see our capability as a first world power squandered over ridiculous partisan playground fights. The bill was basically a re-commitment to the COMPETES act, which funded science for the sake of ensuring America stayed competitive in a world market and didn’t fall behind scientifically whether for the sake of innovation or simply profitable technology. COMPETES was surprisingly put into place by the Bush Administration.
It feels more and more we’re slowly moving backwards into the dark ages again, reversing the progress of clear and rational thinking. This comes within a week of Sarah Palin saying : “They’re quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the 10 commandments, it’s pretty simple.” Ralph Hall and like-minded people in the GOP seem pretty determined to dim any sort of light on intellectual progress in this country.
Its this startling trend towards disregarding education and anti-reality makes it a breeding ground for ignorance, pseudo-science, and brainwashed people, like mold to week-old bread.
Also curses to badastromony for getting his article up just before I finished writing mine.
Neat Stuff
May 13th
Haven’t been able to keep this updated as much as usual lately, so heres a post of some of the more interesting research and development and other just interesting videos I’ve found around the intarwebs. I’m always looking for suggestions for this stuff, so feel free to comment if you know anything I should add.
Powers of Ten
May 7th
This video gives a really neat sense of size and the music is incredibly good. The music is by Mat Jarvis of Microscopics. Would be cool to see an updated version of this with more modern graphics for the stuff we do know (like when we get way out there).
Here’s the original dialog :
Gazing into the depths of space
May 6th
Every now and again, as does everyone, I find myself consumed with the drama in my life. Personal interactions, local troubles, global issues. These are all important, sometimes even crucial. But when I can, I try to remember to leverage myself out, to try to gain some perspective.
Gazing into the depths of space, plummeting into the environs of a hundred quadrillion suns… that’s where true perspective can be found.
- Phil Plait of BadAstronomy.com
Some say science doesn’t make company with love, art, creativity, beauty, emotion and inspiration. Some say that science is cold, hard and calculating. Some say science has given us nothing but charts, graphs, formulas and numbers.
To this I have only one word : Perspective